Roman, today I want to talk about what causes muscle cramp
Roman, today I want to talk about what causes muscle cramp. Let's cue that intro. The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roman Podcast. Welcome back to another Row Man Cycling Podcast. Today I want to talk to you, it's a subject that's near and dear to my heart, having recently cramped. I want to talk to you about what causes muscle cramp. It's something where sort of science meets superstition meets tradition and I want to bang this one out of the water, tell you some horrific stories of me cramp and how you prevent cramp and a couple of little interesting tippets along the way. I'm still out in Medellin, Colombia. So I am in fact your intrepid roving reporter again today. Before I jump into today's podcast, let me tell you all about Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch. That's the address you head to if you head on over Patreon you can buy me the price of a beer once a month to say thanks for the podcast, small independent creators, they really really need your support and they need your help to keep podcasts around to keep YouTube channels around otherwise they disappear. So many of my favorite YouTubers and favorite podcasters have lasted 6 months, 12 months and then they've disappeared. You subscribe on probably EuroSport Patreon Audible all the sorry not patreon your sports audible all these other services you pay five euro month and they just don't care Netflix don't care about your business But when you subscribe to independent creators like the roadman podcast you put a smile on the creator's face And I promise you put a smile on my face every time I get a new patreon So I thank you very much for that and if you'd like to buy me that beer if you're getting some value The link is down description patreon.com forward slash antony underscore watch Okay, what causes muscle cramp? It is one of the most painful experiences of your life. I don't think I'm exaggerating that. Maybe there's a what the scientists call a frequency bias I've just had a couple of days ago. So I'm prone to over exaggerate the impact of cramp. If you're not entirely sure what it is, you'll see it most visibly in footballers at the end of games where they drop to the ground like they've been shot from the stand by a sniper and they're riving in the ground in agony. Now I know you're going to be thinking footballers are pretty modernist so it probably doesn't even hurt but trust me it's agony. I was going up Lettras the 81 kilometer longest climb in the world out here in Columbia, the iconic climb and I took the climb like a training day when I should have taken it like a race day and didn't show the climb, the massive mount and the respect I should have and I point in the climb I experience cramp. Now it's a long time since I cramped especially because there hasn't been a whole pile of bike racing on last year and we don't have the heat in Ireland so I haven't cramped in a long long time and it was an absolutely visceral reminder of how fucking miserable that muscle cramp is. I was going up letras and I could feel it coming on, I could just feel the muscles tighten and I could feel a tightening and then you pedal and boom, it's like someone gets a scissors, cuts it into the back of your hamstring and chops your hamstring in half. The pain is undescribable and it stops you in your tracks. It will stop a pedal revolution entirely and it's like nothing you've experienced. The closest analogy if you have an experienced cramp I can give if you have a cot and you know that really stingy alcohol robe you put into a cot where it's just after Richter scale with pain. That's how cramp fails. Pretty, pretty miserable. Cramps typically last from anywhere from sort of five, ten seconds to a couple of minutes and the ones I had were running in my hamstring. So I was peddling through the cramp and at the point where my hamstring was engaging, it was just locking. And then the point where my quad kicked in, it was easing off and this happened and it last for probably three four minutes and I knew if I had it stopped I wasn't getting going again and I knew from experience that if I just kept pedaling slowly it would disappear and I could get back into my rhythm. But it's something really to be avoided and that's what I want to talk about today is how you can avoid that. But to understand or supposed to talk about how to avoid it it's maybe necessary to have a brief understanding of what it is.
It's essentially it's a malfunctioning of your central nervous system
It's essentially it's a malfunctioning of your central nervous system. It's specifically that signaling system which determines muscle tension. And the muscle tension is just it's way over tension. And that's the problem. You can you can feel the hamstring or the quadricep muscle and the tension is all around on it. And the way we prevent that, as you can guess from that, that explanation or definition is it's figuring out how to reduce the tax on the central nervous system. And I suppose one of them is so central to what we do in roadman cycling. It does a reason we don't give clients you know 60 minute threshold intervals that we break it up into three 20 minutes threshold intervals. It's to give that break so a stress and then a break stress and a break and that's how we structure intervals and that's designed to prevent that overloading of that central nervous system. You'll typically see this in people that jump into events that are way over their head like they dive in like their longest ride is like 40k. And then their body rings the moccons like, Hey, so you want to come and do a 200 k sporty for the weekend? And they're like, Oh, yeah, why not? What's the worst that can happen? And they go and do this 200 kilometer sporty and the wheels just Catastrophically spectacularly fall off. That's what happens when you go way in over your limit. You get a malfunctioning of that central nervous system. It ruins that tensioning into your muscles and then they completely lock up. So obviously an easy way to prevent this happening is I'd call it graded adaptation. So if your longest ride you've ever done is 50k, you know a stretch target is 60k or 70k, not 200k. So play just a little bit above your limits to give yourself that stimulus but not to overreach and completely overrun that central nervous system. Any sort of changes that you're not used to will stress that system and potentially cut result in cramp position changes as something you see a lot in people. If they move their saddle and it's maybe a 2 centimeter saddle change, I would say to You move the 2 centimeter saddle change in tiny increments, break the 2 centimeters open to maybe 0.5 centimeters a day over 4 Royads instead of doing it all in one goal because that position change results in that same overloading. Interestingly when Reuters, we used Qatar as an example in a podcast yesterday about a place that just has super flat terrain. Well, when you get somebody that's gone from somewhere like Qatar with super flat terrain, a lower torque value on the pedals than when you're climbing and you go off and you do an event like maybe the Hoech route which has just seven days back to back climbing. You're introducing a different stress which your body hasn't encountered before and that can result in cramping as well. So with all that stuff it has to be graded adaptation. And this is a big role for your coach is determining what that target is, figuring out what the demands of that target are and then starting to build those into training. So we work with a lot of guys in Qatar, Dubai and they might have super hilly objectives. And one of our goals then is to get them ready for that. So when they hit the hills, their body isn't like crisis mode gone. Holy shit, what the hell is happening? Hydration and electrolytes are interesting because this is kind of where fact meets fiction. Scientific papers I've dug through, I haven't seen a lot of research to back up the efficacy of hydration and electrolyte intake to prevent cramping. But yet anecdotally it helps a massive amount for me and training partners that I have and I have and I ride with especially in hot weather. So like me coming across from Ireland where I'm typically wearing like 20 layers and a raincoat going out training and it takes about a half an hour to get ready and I'm over in Columbia rocking around shorts in the jersey going up the climb with a zip down. It's a massive change in environment that any change in environment like that is going to cause a problem. And salt loss is huge for me on climbs like that, especially long climbs where I'm walking close to the limit. Salt loss is huge and replacing those salts with fluid is always super, super helpful for me in avoiding cramp. I'm thinking of the times I've cramp really bad. They've always been on long climbs either alpine climbs are here in Colombia and in my mind it's magnesium deficit, electrolyte deficit and poor hydration are the three main causes. That's anecdotal. Science doesn't entirely back it up but it works. It works. Do it in conjunction with the other advice that is backed up with more efficacy and which one of these things is stretching.
Stretching pre-ride and stretching pokes ride because cramping is…
Stretching pre-ride and stretching pokes ride because cramping is largely a muscle tensioning issue so anything you can do to aid that sort of tensioning system for once with a better expression or lubricate that pathway is going to help a lot. So stretching like 10, 15 minutes pre-ride activation stretching or even if you feel a cramp coming on, save a cramp coming on in the calf, actually stretching on the bike that muscle isolating it on the on the bike is going to help a lot to ease out those cramps. These are just topics at the moment like yesterday are rolled out the best what makes the best cycling destination and again today talking about cramp. This is kind of what's on my mind at the moment and I know you're rolling around in Ireland, the UK or any of the colder climates at the moment and you mightn't be, a cramp mightn't be to the forefront of your mind but it's something that you can come back and reference time and time again as you pick your cycling destination because there's just, there's no better way to give yourself motivation through the season than having a cycling holiday planned in the calendar. For me when I look at the calendar and it's January and I go okay the next time I'm getting away isn't until June. It's super hard to motivate yourself for that six months but if you know you're getting away in two months all of a sudden the motivation sounds easier because you're counting down to something and it works really really well for me. Anyway road man that's the crack I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow thanks for listening to me from Colombia. Before you go anywhere, our first ever romance summit had aired back in December. I brought together 30 experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to biohack your physiology, how to melt away body fat and smash your cycling goals. Since airing that back in December, I've just been in on days with my Instagram DM's Twitter Direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I had it locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-time payment of €47 and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're going to have the videos and the MP-trays. In there I've got interviews with world-time mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, boig fit experts and some of the legends at a sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that way to do it, it's the head on over to this URL www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Check it out, learn it, take it in, because this is short to set you on the right path for 2021. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Before you go anywhere, our first ever romance summit had aired back in December. I brought together 30 experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to biohack your physiology, how to melt away body fat and smash your cycling goals, whatever that was. Since airing that back in December, I've just been in on days of my Instagram, DM's, Twitter direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I hadn't locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-point payment of €47 and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're going to have the videos and the MP-Trees. In there I've got interviews with world-tore mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, bike-fit experts and some of the legends at a sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. Over 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that, the way to do it is to head on over to this URL www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Get it, check it out, learn it, take it in because this is sure to set you on the right path for 2021.